This article outlines a framework of creativity based on functional neuroanatomy. Recent advances in the field of cognitive neuroscience have identified distinct brain circuits that are involved in specific higher brain functions. To date, these findings have not been applied to research on creativity. It is pro- posed that there are four basic types of creative insights, each mediated by a distinctive neural circuit. By definition, creative insights occur in consciousness. Given the view that the working memory buffer of the prefrontal cortex holds the content of consciousness, each of the four distinctive neural loops terminates there. When creativity is the result of deliberate control, as opposed to spontaneous gener- ation, the prefrontal cortex also instigates the creative process. Both processing modes, deliberate and spontaneous, can guide neural
computation in structures that contribute emotional content and in structures that provide cognitive analysis, yielding the four basic types of creativity. Supportive evi- dence from psychological, cognitive, and neuroscientific studies is presented and integrated in this article. The new theoretical framework systematizes the interaction between knowledge and creative
thinking, and how the nature of this relationship changes as a function of domain and age.
Implications for the arts and sciences are briefly discussed.
I’ve been especially appreciative of my colleagues this week and there are lots of reasons why.
My colleagues teach me.
My colleagues let me teach them.
My colleagues disagree with me.
Canada’s universities are critical to Canada’s
international assistance and to mobilizing people and ideas for an innovative, inclusive and
prosperous world. Through leveraging research expertise and networks, engaging researchers and
students, working with communities,
and supporting the provision of quality higher education in partner countries, universities play an
active role in reducing poverty, creating
new opportunities for the world’s poorest and most marginalized, and building more inclusive societies. Canada’s universities are a key, and often underleveraged, asset in shaping an effective and innovative approach for the delivery of Canadian development assistance for the benefit of all citizens in partner countries.
As the voice of Canada’s universities at home and abroad, representing the interests of 97 Canadian public and private not-for-profit universities, Universities Canada is grateful for the opportunity to provide input into this important process of re-examining and re-think-ing Canada’s international assistance policy.
I have been wanting to write about tired teaching for some time now. Concerns about burnout are what’s motivating me. Teachers can reach a place where teaching does nothing for them or their students. They don’t just wake up one morning and find themselves burned out; they’ve moved there gradually, and it’s a journey that often starts with tired teaching.
There’s nothing on the subject in my big file of articles and resources. I can’t remember having read about it, and I’m not sure how much we even talk about it. We do talk about being tired. Teaching is relentless. It happens every day, several times a week—or potentially 24/7 if it’s online. And it’s demanding. There’s so much more than the actual teaching. There’s considerable planning involved before each class. Plus, we need to spend time with students—those who want to talk, those needing
help, and those with questions or, sometimes, complaints. There are assignments to grade and feedback to provide—
all carrying the expectation of a quick turnaround. With multiple courses to teach, we do get tired, but I think we regularly confuse physical fatigue with the more serious emotional tiredness that comes from a heavy workload of always being there, always giving, and always juggling multiple balls in the air.
Since January, some people have wondered what implications the selection of Betsy DeVos as the U.S. secretary of education may have for higher education. This discussion leads to an important practical question: In what ways can the government successfully increase college graduation rates? This issue is especially salient, as many college students are preparing to receive their degrees in the next few weeks.
In our recent extensive review of over 1,800 research studies on college students, we found that some of the most common approaches for promoting student success simply aren’t effective. For example, most states have moved to performance-based funding for supporting their public colleges. Instead of giving money based on how many students are enrolled, some funding is based on a measure of institutional performance, such the number of students who graduate or the number of courses completed.
How many friends have you got, and how many people do you know? If you use social media such as Facebook and Twitter you can probably quantify these things quite readily, but the answers will be wildly inaccurate as we all routinely overestimate these things.
What is more, the answers will be irrelevant to your work as an academic. We are all quite naturally obsessed with what our friends and acquaintances think of us and we crave evidence of the esteem in which we are held.
At nearly all colleges and universities, online education is almost never mentioned in academic rules that judge faculty members and determine if they advance. If you teach online, you may do it for extra compensation -- called “overload,” pay above your basic salary -- or for the personal satisfaction of participating in what some believe is the next stage in the evolution of higher education. But teaching online may not be a wise move to further your academic career.
Teaching online can even be a dangerous career move, departing from the comfortable respectability of conventional classrooms for the exotic, suspicious digital world. In the hierarchy of status, if you teach online, do you compromise your position? Will your commitment to scholarship be questioned? Why would you go online when your future depends on publishing results of your research, not engaging in virtual instruction?
Graduate students need to seek out opportunities for collaboration at every stage of their graduate career. Experience working as part of a team is valuable for Ph.D. students preparing for a rapidly evolving academic job market, and it is indispensable for those pursuing careers beyond academe.
This morning, I had the opportunity to talk with CBC radio morning shows about academic freedom: what is it and
why is it important to professors. And most importantly, why is it so important that it’s at the centre of a 4-week strike
that has no end in sight?
Academic Freedom has been contorted by many forces: in popular terms, by sensationalist reporting that focuses
on individual instances of a professor doing something bad but being protected from reprisal. But it’s not really that.
“Ideological diversity” and “intellectual diversity” are the buzzwords on everyone’s lips these days. Recently, when a student at a town hall asked Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg how he makes his company a “free and safe environment” for self-expression, he said, “We have a board member who is an adviser to the Trump administration, Peter Thiel. I personally believe that if you want to have a company that is committed to diversity, you need to be committed to all kinds of diversity, including ideological diversity,” an article on The Ringer reports. Meanwhile, since students shouted down the controversial sociologist Charles A. Murray at Middlebury College this month, many conservatives and some liberals have been quick to chide liberal students and academics for their intolerance and push for ideological and intellectual diversity on campuses, notes Kate Knibbs, a staff writer for the sports and popculture website.
Enrolments in Canadian public postsecondary institutions (colleges and universities) totalled more than 2 million in the 2014/2015 academic year, edging up 0.3% from the previous year.
Last week we reviewed the reappointment, tenure and promotion process. In this article, we will discuss strategies
for assembling your file for it.
The typical file should include a copy of your CV, a narrative and documents providing evidence of your accomplishments in the three areas of faculty work: teaching, research and scholarship, and service. Those three
components of the file should be tightly integrated to tell a compelling story about your accomplishments.
Why are writing groups so difficult to sustain? How can they be cultivated and nurtured? We would like to share our
experiences of being a productive and successful writing group over the last seven years. We began with seven
non-tenured and/or contractual members who saw academic writing as an important process for developing research ideas and, consequently, for career growth. We also recognized that it was vital to have a circle of friends where everyone can receive supportive critique and informative feedback on their writing. Over the years, the group has grown to include 17 academics at all ranks and stages.
A couple of weeks after the end of my first semester of teaching as the instructor of record, I received "the packet" in my campus mailbox — an interoffice envelope stuffed with course evaluations from my students. Those evaluations mattered a lot to me at the time, as I was still figuring out this whole teaching thing. Was I doing a good job? Did my students like the class? And, more selfishly, did they like me?
I am a proud curmudgeon. Whatever hip new thing you’re promoting, I’m probably uninterested. Whatever buzzword
you might be enamored of, I probably hate it. And whatever bureaucratic activity you want me to engage in, I almost
certainly think it’s pointless.
Despite my complete lack of buy-in for whatever you’re into, I’m also willing to work hard for my department and students, even if that means jumping through your hoops. I have worked successfully to move policy proposals through the governance system, I’ve overseen a curriculum overhaul in my department, I’ve coordinated class schedules, and I have spearheaded a successful effort to expand the number of majors in my department. In those efforts I’ve cleared numerous bureaucratic hurdles, generated enough paperwork to chop down the Amazon rain forest, and even worked a few buzzwords into some of the paperwork.
Abstract
Emerging from the contested site of a new university campus, this article reflects on the transformative process of reconceptualizing and rebuilding a professional and an academic stream in a 21st-century Faculty of Education. In order to maximize her own capital, an assistant professor sought tenure in an innovative new stream introduced to her campus,
professor of teaching. The novel rank reflected the commitment of the university to provide educational leadership, outstanding teaching, and curriculum innovation to higher education. However, guidelines for promotion to professor were not directive and
exhaustive but more suggestive of being situated in place-based environments. Within the context of a market driven and policy-laden post-secondary institution, this was problematic. Since evidence supporting promotion to full professor is dependent on the discipline and the faculty, a myriad of interpretations of what exactly constituted a professor of
teaching emerged. Based on the ambiguity of these policies, the discussion surrounding the experiences of otherness and marginalization which arose as this scholar-practitioner focused on her work as a teacher educator and a researcher in an emerging rank became of singular interest.
Keywords: professor of teaching, higher education, tenure, promotion, research, marginalization
Résumé
Tirant sa source du site contesté d’un nouveau campus universitaire, cet article propose une réflexion sur le processus de transformation lié à la reconceptualisation et à la refonte d’un volet professionnel et universitaire au sein d’une Faculté d’éducation du XXIe siècle. En vue de maximiser son propre capital, une professeure adjointe a cherché à obtenir sa
permanence dans un volet novateur introduit dans son campus, celui de « professor of teaching », un nouveau niveau de poste reflétant la volonté de l’université de promouvoir le leadership en éducation, l’excellence dans l’enseignement et l’innovation en matière de curriculum au postsecondaire. Toutefois, au lieu d’être directifs et exhaustifs, les critères à remplir pour accéder à ce niveau de poste étaient plutôt de nature suggestive et fondées sur le milieu. Dans le contexte d’un établissement postsecondaire axé sur le marché et ancré dans des politiques, cela posait un problème. Comme les données venant appuyer
la promotion au poste de professeur titulaire dépendent de la discipline et de la faculté, une foule d’interprétations de ce qui constitue exactement un « professor of teaching » a surgi. Étant donné l’ambiguïté de ces politiques, la discussion entourant les expériences d’altérité et de marginalisation qui est survenue lorsque cette universitaire-praticienne a concentré son attention sur son travail comme professeure de pédagogie et comme chercheuse dans un nouveau niveau de poste s’est avérée particulièrement intéressante.
Mots-clés : professor of teaching, enseignement supérieur, permanence, promotion,
recherche, marginalisation
Last semester I reinvented English composition as a community-service learning course. My students did the usual work of any composition course — developing basic writing skills, crafting narrative essays and arguments, conducting research — but it was in the service of creating print and web content for a local homeless shelter.
In their end-of-semester evaluations, students praised the experiment, and I will probably repeat it. But I don’t want to make too much of that particular reinvention, because I have reinvented first-year composition at least a half-dozen times in my 20 years of teaching it, and will no doubt do so again. The same goes for most people I know who teach composition.
Background/Context: In many countries, there are multiple studies intended to improve initial teacher education. These have generally focused on pieces of teacher education rather than wholes, and have used an underlying linear logic. It may be, however, that what is needed are new research questions and theoretical frameworks that account for wholes, not just parts, and take complex, rather than reductionist perspectives.
Background: Much research has sought to investigate emotions and forms of emotion management among teachers worldwide, including the connection between educational change and teacher emotion; the association between the culture of teaching and teachers’ emotional experience within parentteacher interactions; the link between teacher emotion and teacher beliefs; and the
expressions and sources of a wide variety of emotions in teaching.
Instruction of team skills is quickly emerging as an important and missing dimension of engineering education. This project evaluated a new framework for guiding students in providing self- and peer assessments of their effectiveness in teamwork. This framework is the foundation for a new web-based tool that offers students structured feedback from teammates, along with personalized exercises and actionable strategies that guide targeted learning in the areas thereby identified. Specifically, the study documented in this report investigated whether the feedback framework, when used for intra-team self and peer feedback, increased students’ abilities to learn about and improve their team-effectiveness in executing design projects.